United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 20-1807 JERMAINE ST. AUBYN ROBINSON, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND,* Attorney General, Respondent. PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS Before Kayatta, Thompson, and Gelpí, Circuit Judges. James R. Tewhey on brief for petitioner. Brian Boynton, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, Paul Fiorino, Senior Litigation Counsel, and Kevin J. Conway, Trial Attorney, on brief for respondent. December 28, 2022 * Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 43(c)(2), Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has been substituted for former Attorney General William P. Barr. KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Jermaine St. Aubyn Robinson concedes that, unless he is a citizen of the United States through derivative citizenship, he is removable as an alien who has been convicted of an aggravated felony. Because we determine that Robinson has not generated a genuine issue of material fact supporting his claim of derivative citizenship, we deny his petition for review. I. Briefly, we recite the following undisputed facts. Robinson was born in Jamaica in 1982 and was admitted to the United States in March 1994. On February 26, 2018, Robinson was convicted in Massachusetts state court of possession with intent to distribute a Class B controlled substance (cocaine). The United States initiated removal proceedings against Robinson in 2019 based on this conviction. During an August 2019 hearing before an Immigration Judge, Robinson argued that he was a U.S. citizen because his mother, Novlett Robinson ("Novlett"), became a naturalized citizen in 1998 or 1999, before Robinson reached the age of eighteen. This contention conflicted with a birth certificate produced by the government that listed Conrad Robinson ("Conrad"), a native of Jamaica who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2014, and Yvonne Richards ("Yvonne"), a citizen of Jamaica, as Robinson's parents. Robinson explained that he did not know Yvonne and had always believed Novlett to be his - 2 - "biological mother." 1 However, Robinson was unable to provide any competent proof to support his claim that Novlett was his biological mother. During a second hearing in September 2019, he conceded through counsel that "derivative citizenship is not a possibility." In January 2020, Robinson accepted an order of removal from the Immigration Judge (IJ) and waived appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Robinson subsequently filed a pro se appeal to the BIA claiming derivative U.S. citizenship based on his assertion that Novlett was his biological mother. Robinson's appeal was based on a different birth certificate that he obtained from the Jamaican Embassy listing his mother as Novlett.2 The BIA dismissed Robinson's appeal on July 16, 2020, after finding that the IJ's decision became administratively final upon Robinson's January 2020 waiver of appeal. Robinson timely petitioned this court for review of the BIA's decision based on the assertion that he is a U.S. citizen and, thus, that he cannot be deported. 1 We use the term "biological mother" only because both Robinson and the government frame the issue here as whether …
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